This second irreverent Monty
Python feature film - from co-directors Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones,
skewered religion, medieval epics, the Middle Ages and the
Arthurian legend, Camelot and
a host of other topics.

the loopy, anarchic Camelot
Song (Knights of the Round Table) (pictured twice) broke
out after King Arthur (Graham Chapman) spotted the castle Camelot
in the distance to his Knights of the Round Table. (Patsy (Terry
Gilliam) downplayed the sight: "It's
only a model!" King Arthur: "Shh!")

It featured
high-kicking, helmeted knights in a chorus line, and such looney
lyrics as:

"We're Knights of the Round Table / We dance whene'er
we're able / We do routines and chorus scenes with footwork impecc-a-ble
/ We dine well here in Camelot / We eat ham and jam and spam-a-lot!"

After
the number was concluded, King Arthur memorably reconsidered and
sighed: "Well, on second thought, let's not go to Camelot.
It is a silly place."

Morocco (1930)

This early melodramatic romance with
a love triangle featured sultry and bewitching seductress and bewitching
singer Amy Jolly's (Marlene Dietrich in her American film debut)
famous gender-challenging, cigarette-smoking, tuxedo-clad androgynous
cabaret act in Lo Tinto's North African cabaret, set
during the Second Moroccan War in the 1920s.

in an early scene, Amy sang Quand L'amour
Est Mort (When Love Dies) (pictured) with smoky, world-weary
eroticism, took a flower from the hair of a young lady in the audience
(asking: "May I have this?"), inhaled it suggestively,
and then stole a kiss from the woman that was full on the mouth
- one of the earliest (if not the first) female-to-female kisses
on screen. The woman blushed behind her hand-held fan, as Amy tipped
her hat

in a slightly later scene, the seductive Dietrich,
wearing a skimpy black dress and with a feathery boa draped over
her shoulders, also performed What Am I Bid for My Apple? (pictured):

"An apple they
say, keeps the doctor away, while his pretty young wife has the time
of her life, with the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,
oh what am I bid for my apple?"

Carrying a basket of apples, she sold
one to admiring French foreign Legionnaire Pvt. Tom
Brown (a young Gary Cooper) in the audience (after at first offering
it for free: "You
can have it for nothing, if you like" but he refused). He bit
into it lustily (filmed in closeup during his third bite), and
asked her to sit in his lap.

Moulin Rouge (1952)

Director John Huston's fictional biopic of French post-impressionistic
artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Jose Ferrer) was set in a "wild,
wicked, wonderful" gay nineties Paris.

Looking ravishingly and
stunningly beautiful, prima donna Jane Avril (Hungarian actress Zsa
Zsa Gabor, without any skill in lip-synching or dancing - her singing
was dubbed by Muriel Smith) made a grand entrance as she descended
a staircase, singing It's April Again (pictured) - subsequently
known as The Song from Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart):

"Away,
away, the river goes rolling. O may, O may our love remain true.
It's April again, and lovers are lining the banks of the Seine. It's
April again, and every eye is shining."

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

#
85 "Come What May"

Baz Luhrmann's dazzlingly colorful, whirling and kinetic
modern musical with stunning Oscar-winning costuming was set in 1900
Paris, and told a story of tragic love.

It was the first Best Picture-nominated
musical since Beauty and the Beast (1991) and first non-animated
musical since Cabaret (1972).

A flashbacked scene introduced the star attraction
of the Moulin Rouge cabaret with a feverishly
dreamlike can-can musical performance of red-lipped chorine and tuberculosis
courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman) (pictured often)), known as "The
Sparkling Diamond." She was perched on a flying trapeze-like swing
above an audience of top-hatted gentlemen in cool-blue light and singing
a Marilyn-to-Madonna Sparkling
Diamonds medley
(pictured twice): ("Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" and "Material
Girl") while being lowered into the mass of adoring
fans.

Christian's performance of The
Sound of Music and Elton John's Your Song (pictured twice) (with
Placido Domingo) for Satine on a Parisian rooftop under a blue night
sky - to express his love for her and confess that he wasn't wealthy
Duke of Monroth (Richard Roxburgh) but only a poor writer. She was
astonished and asked: ("You're
not another of Toulouse's oh-so-talented, charmingly Bohemian, impoverished
protegees?")

the Elephant Love Medley (pictured) (featuring
over a half-dozen love songs and ballads) when
Christian vowed: ("Love is like oxygen...Love is a many-splendored
thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love")

their duet Come What May (pictured):

"Never knew I could feel like this, Like I've never
seen the sky before. I want to vanish inside your kiss. Every day
I'm loving you more and more. Listen to my heart, can you hear
it sing? Telling me to give you everything. Seasons may change,
winter to spring. But I love you until the end of time. Come what
may, Come what may, I will love you until my dying day..."

There were many other popular rock and soul
songs performed by actors and singers, such as:

In
the opening crane shot of this great children's film during the opening
credits, it showed the astonishing and enchanting image of Kermit the
Frog (voice of Jim Henson) and told about his origin story.

Kermit was found to be sitting on a
log in a Mississippi swamp, strumming a banjo and singing the Oscar-nominated The
Rainbow Connection (pictured) (with music and lyrics written
by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher). The song was also reprised by the
whole cast of Muppets at the end of the movie. [Note: Williams and
Ascher were also nominated for the film's Best Score - both nominations
lost.]:

Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what's
on the other side? Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and
rainbows have nothing to hide. So we've been told and some choose
to believe it. I know they're wrong, wait and see. Someday we'll
find it, the rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers and me...

Other highlights
included:

Kermit and Fozzie Bear's (voice of Frank Oz) road
song Movin'
Right Along (pictured)

Miss Piggy's (also voice of Oz) ode to love at
first sight for Kermit: Never
Before, Never Again (pictured)

Dr. Teeth (also voice of Henson) and
the Electric Meyhem's psychedelic Can You Picture That? (pictured)

Kermit
and pianist Rowlf the Dog's (also voice of Henson) torch song duet I
Hope That Something Better Comes Along (pictured)

Gonzo's (voice
of Dave Goelz) sweet, wistful song I'm Going To Go Back There
Someday (pictured), sung around
a nighttime desert campfire with his friends Rowlf, Miss Piggy, Kermit
and Fozzie the Bear

In the climactic Magic Show culminating
in a hole being blasted through the roof of the studio set to allow
a rainbow to cascade in, the cast reprised The Rainbow Connection (pictured):

"Life's like a movie, write your own ending, keep believing,
keep pretending, we did what we set out to do..."

All of the
subsequent Muppet films would feature catchy original tunes, such as:

The
Great Muppet Caper (1981) which featured the romantic Oscar-nominated
song The First Time It Happens

The Muppets
Take Manhattan (1984) with all the familiar puppet characters
reprising their roles in the Big Apple and referencing the classic
Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let's put on a show" musicals
- and with Miss Piggy in a diva role

and later, A Muppet Christmas
Carol (1992) that featured many Christmas-themed songs including
Kermit's (as Bob Cratchit) One More Sleep 'Til Christmas

Music for Millions (1944)

Billed as a tearjerking "romantic drama of young
love," this Henry Koster-directed WWII-era MGM musical featured
big-nosed Jimmy Durante (as piano player Andrews).

While playing the piano, he led a
rousing rendition of Umbriago (pictured twice) for an audience
of soldiers.

The film ended with real-life conductor and pianist
Jose Iturbi's orchestra playing Handel's Messiah (pictured)
with the "Hallelujah" chorus.

The Music Man (1962)

Warners' adapted composer Meredith Willson's story/score
and the spirited 1957 stage musical into this popular and cheerful
production set in 1912 in River City, Iowa, with well-known songs
sung mostly by infamous con-man "Professor" Harold Hill
(Robert Preston reprising his stage role).

Songs and individual/ensemble musical productions
included:

the inventive opening Rock Island (pictured)
in which a train car full of salesmen mimicked train sounds while
complaining about the fraudulent and "fake" Harold Hill:
("Look
whatayatalk. whatayatalk, whatayatalk, whatayataalk, whatayatalk?...Ya
can talk, ya can talk, ya can bicker, ya can talk, ya can bicker,
bicker, bicker, ya can talk, ya can talk, ya can talk, talk, talk,
talk, bicker, bicker, bicker, ya can talk all ya wanna, but it's
different then it was...He's a music man and he sells clarinets
to the kids in the town with the big trombones and the rat-a-tat
drums, big brass bass, big brass bass, and the piccolo, the piccolo
with uniforms, too with a shiny gold braid on the coat and a big
red stripe runnin'")

Ya Got
Trouble (pictured): ("Ya got trouble, folks, right here
in River City. Trouble with a capital "T" And that rhymes
with "P" and that stands for pool!"), sung by
Prof. Hill to the townsfolk in the town square

Marian
the Librarian (Marian Paroo portrayed by Shirley Jones) (pictured),
sung by Prof. Hill to Marian in the library

the singing of the charming tune Gary, Indiana (pictured)
by Professor Hill

Marian's love song duet with Professor Hill Till
There Was You (pictured) ("There was love all around But
I never heard it singing No I never heard it at all Till there
was you"), culminating with their embrace and kiss on a small
bridge

the
climactic end credits reprise of the hit song 76 Trombones (pictured
twice), with Hill striding triumphantly in front of the now - 'professional'
marching band in the town composed of dozens of teens

Although this was a John Ford western, it contained
one memorable dance sequence in the town of Tombstone to celebrate
the half-erected construction of a church a delightful open-air dance.

Marshall Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) asked schoolmarm
Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs): "Oblige me ma'am?" She accepted and as they
made their way up to the raised dance floor, everyone was told to
part deferentially around them and make way:

"Sashay back and
make room for our new Marshal and his lady-fair."

Wyatt gracefully
whirled her around in a rigid mechanical waltz step, as everyone
clapped from an outer circle.

My Dream is Yours (1949)

In this Michael Curtiz-directed Warner Bros. musical
comedy (a Technicolored remake of the pre-code musical comedy Twenty
Million Sweethearts (1934) starring Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers),
a young mid-20s Doris Day (in her second film as war widow and aspiring
radio singer/star Martha Gibson) starred with Jack Carson (as hot-shot
promoter Doug Blake).

Doris Day sang the film's
highlighted hit (You May Not Be an Angel, But) I'll String Along
With You (pictured) to her young blonde-haired son before bedtime,
to lull him to sleep. The song was played during the opening credits
and often heard throughout the picture.

In a nightclub scene, Day also joined in the singing
of the title song My
Dream Is Yours (pictured twice) with Gary Mitchell (Lee Bowman
dubbed by Hal Derwin), and she sang it during a radio appearance
(also pictured).

Day also sang the delightful songs Someone Like
You and Tic, Tic,
Tic (pictured) - she referred to the latter song as "that
geiger counter song."

This film was most notable for its animated dream
sequence (directed by Friz Freleng) using Franz Liszt's "Hungarian
Rhapsody" as
the basis for the Freddy Get Ready sequence (pictured) that
combined live action (Day and Carson in rabbit costumes) with an animated
Bugs Bunny and Tweety (voice of Mel Blanc).

Best Director George Cukor's and Warners' Best Picture-winning
screen musical came eight years after the amazing success of the
Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe Broadway play of George Bernard
Shaw's Pygmalion.

Filmed in 70mm Super Panavision, it told
the rags-to-riches story of an incorrigible phonetics instructor
- Professor Henry Higgins (Oscar-winning Rex Harrison who performed
the Broadway stage show in 1956) - and his bet that he could pass
off a street urchin flower seller - Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn
replacing the stage's Julie Andrews, with singing dubbed by Marni
Nixon) - as a lady.

The many memorable songs set
in an idealized Edwardian London included:

Eliza's wistful dreams
and desires for success (and chocolates) in Wouldn't It Be Loverly? (pictured)

early on, Higgins singing
of Why Can't the English? (pictured)
to reveal his snobbery about the misuse of the English language

Higgins' eloquent proclamation
in his home's library of his eternal bachelorhood in I'm an
Ordinary Man (pictured)

Eliza's scoundrel dustman father Alfred P. Doolittle
(Stanley Holloway) delivered two rousing and jaunty songs: With
a Little Bit of Luck (pictured) and Get Me To the Church On
Time (pictured) with Alfred dressed up for the formal ceremony

Toward the middle of the film, Eliza expressed
her bitter, spiteful and vengeful fantasies toward Higgins in Just
You Wait (pictured):

"Just
you wait, 'enry 'iggins, just you wait! / You'll be sorry, but your
tears'll be too late!"

One of the musical's best-known
songs was Freddy Eynsford-Hill's (Jeremy Brett) ode to Eliza titled On
the Street Where You Live (pictured).

Eliza also sang back to Freddy the demanding Show
Me (pictured):

"Words, words, words, I'm so sick of words... Don't
talk of stars, burning above. If you're in love, show me! / Tell
me no dreams filled with desire. If you're on fire, show me!"

She also sang the beautifully
romantic I
Could Have Danced All Night (pictured).

A baffled and confused Higgins
queried with the misogynistic Why
Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man! (pictured), while Eliza claimed
she no longer needed Henry and could be independent in her rendition
of Without
You (pictured), while he sat in a white wicker chair:

"There'll be spring every
year without you / England still will be here without you."

One of the loveliest songs
in the soundtrack was toward the film's conclusion when Higgins sang I've
Grown Accustomed to Her Face (pictured) when he finally (and regretfully)
realized his true love for Eliza.